and Hero-Worship. Perhaps his most remarkable book—a book that is unique in all English literature—is The French Revolution, which appeared in 1837. In the year 1845, his Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches were published, and drew after them a large number of eager readers. In 1865 he completed the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken, his History of Frederick II., commonly called the Great. This work is so highly regarded in Germany as a truthful and painstaking history that officers in the Prussian army are obliged to study it, as containing the best account of the great battles of the Continent, the fields on which they were fought, and the strategy that went to win them. One of the crowning external honours of Carlyle’s life was his appointment as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866; but at the very time that he was delivering his famous and remarkable Installation Address, his wife lay dying in London. This stroke brought terrible sorrow on the old man; he never ceased to mourn for his loss, and to recall the virtues and the beauties of character in his dead wife; “the light of his life,” he said, “was quite gone out;” and he wrote very little after her death. He himself died in London on the 5th of February 1881.
[28.] Carlyle’s Style.—Carlyle was an author by profession, a teacher of and prophet to his countrymen by his mission, and a student of history by the deep interest he took in the life of man. He was always more or less severe in his judgments—he has been called “The Censor of the Age,”—because of the high ideal which he set up for his own conduct and the conduct of others.—He shows in his historic writings a splendour of imagery and a power of dramatic grouping second only to Shakespeare’s. In command of words he is second to no modern English writer. His style has been highly praised and also energetically blamed. It is rugged, gnarled, disjointed, full of irregular force—shot across by sudden lurid lights of imagination—full of the most striking and indeed astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: “Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered.” There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, such as the following:—
“Genius is an immense capacity for taking pains.”
“Do the duty which lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.”
“History is a mighty drama, enacted upon the theatre of time, with suns for lamps, and eternity for a background.”
“All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven.”
“Remember now and always that Life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality based upon Eternity, and encompassed by Eternity. Find out your task: stand to it: the night cometh when no man can work.”
[29.] Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), the most popular of modern historians,—an essayist, poet, statesman, and orator,—was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, in the year 1800. His father was one of the greatest advocates for the abolition of slavery; and received, after his death, the honour of a monument in Westminster Abbey. Young Macaulay was educated privately, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied classics with great diligence and success, but detested mathematics—a dislike the consequences of which he afterwards deeply regretted. In 1824 he was elected Fellow of his college. His first literary work was done for Knight’s ‘Quarterly Magazine’; but the earliest piece of writing that brought him into notice was his famous essay on Milton, written for the ‘Edinburgh Review’ in 1825. Several years of his life were spent in India, as Member of the Supreme Council; and, on his return, he entered Parliament, where he sat as M.P. for Edinburgh. Several offices were filled by him, among others that of Paymaster-General of the Forces, with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord John Russell. In 1842 appeared his Lays of Ancient Rome, poems which have found a very large number of readers. His greatest work is his History of England from the Accession of James II. To enable himself to write this history he read hundreds of books, Acts of Parliament, thousands of pamphlets, tracts, broadsheets, ballads, and other flying fragments of literature; and he never seems to have forgotten anything he ever read. In. 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1857 was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley—the first literary man who was ever called to the House of Lords. He died at Holly Lodge, Kensington, in the year 1859.
[30.] Macaulay’s Style.—One of the most remarkable qualities in his style is the copiousness of expression, and the remarkable power of putting the same statement in a large number of different ways. This enormous command of expression corresponded with the extraordinary power of his memory. At the age of eight he could repeat
the whole of Scott’s poem of “Marmion.” He was fond, at this early age, of big words and learned English; and once, when he was asked by a lady if his toothache was better, he replied, “Madam, the agony is abated!” He knew the whole of Homer and of Milton by heart; and it was said with perfect truth that, if Milton’s poetical works could have been lost, Macaulay would have restored every line with complete exactness. Sydney Smith said of him: “There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as on great; he is like a book in breeches.” His style has been called “abrupt, pointed, and oratorical.” He is fond of the arts of surprise—of antithesis—and of epigram. Sentences like these are of frequent occurrence:—